great models of antiquity in the exquisite perfection of style than those of any modern country, in spite of a drama the wealth of which was inexhaustible Spain ceased to have any influence on the progress of human thought and action. Her vast empire was a corpse from which life had fled. So complete was the ignorance of Spanish literature, that Montesquieu said of the Spaniards, without incurring the charge of having sacrificed truth to epigram, "Le seul de leurs livres qui soit bon est celui qui a fait voir le ridicule de tous les autres:" a singular proof of literary ingratitude in the countryman of Molière, Corneille, and Le Sage--and a still more remarkable proof of the fluctuation of national studies in a country where, scarce a century before, ignorance of Spanish would have been looked upon as a proof of the most barbarous rusticity. In France, says Cervantes, there is no one man or woman who does not learn Spanish. "En Francia, ni varon ni muger dexa de aprender la lengua Castellana." To the effect of this very circumstance the growing indifference to Spanish literature may, in some measure, be ascribed. During the palmy state of Spanish greatness, the Spaniard, finding his language, as the French is now, the received organ of social intercourse throughout Europe, seldom vouchsafed to study modern languages. Nor, indeed, were such studies congenial to the taste and temper of that fastidious and haughty nation. In earlier days, poetical traditions and popular ballads had wandered across the Pyrenees. The songs of the Troubadours, and the effusions in the tongue of Oc, had, by means of the kindred dialect of Catalonia, exercised great influence over Castilian poetry. But, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the connection between French and Spanish literature was altogether interrupted: as the language of Catalonia sank to the level of a mere provincial dialect, the channel of communication was blocked up. The family relations between the different members of the houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon could not fill up the chasm which nature had placed between the inhabitants of different sides of the Pyrenees, and which centuries of almost incessant warfare had contributed to widen; and as the provinces of Berne and Languedoc became scandalous as the seats of heresy, everything that came from France was looked upon with aversion and distrust. Still stronger and more insurmountable were the barriers against English literature. He who will read the _Dragontea_ of Lope de Vega, the most amiable of authors, and the ode of Gongora, _Al armamento de Felipe segundo contra Inglaterra_, may form some idea of the scorn and hatred with which the Spaniard, proud of his race, proud of his victories, proud of his language, and, above all, tenacious to madness of the unsullied purity of his faith, looked upon the piratical English, twice apostates from the Holy See, who spoke a barbarous